Prince William and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke at the opening of the COP conference in Belem on Thursday.

"All of us here today understand that we are edging dangerously close to the Earth's critical tipping points," said William.

Starmer announced that the United Kingdom “was doubling down on the fight against climate change.”

He recalled with nostalgia how the Paris Agreement ignited a flare of climate optimism and seemed to usher in a new era of greater global cooperation.

“The only question was how fast we could go,” he said, acknowledging that this climate summit, a decade later, was coming at a darker, more fraught moment for multilateralism.

“Today however, sadly that consensus is gone,” he said.